摘要
This paper describes parody as an effective teaching and learning practice in Advanced English course offered to English major juniors and seniors. The objective of this course is to help heighten students towards a more advanced level of English proficiency, and its main preoccupation is doing intensive analyses of carefully selected texts which amount to well-established classics and are characterized with linguistic complexity. To enhance students＇ learning, we embed in the course a practice of parody, which here refers to the creation of an imitative work of an original written work, usually with an attendant comic effect. Upon the completion of each module, students are assigned the task of parodying part of the text, which involves recasting its overall content while retaining formal framework, thus offering students a means of re-paying homage to the excellence of the text. Writing a parody demands great artistry in shaping a creatively simulative work, in fitting exotic content into a local form, and in transplanting new experiential logic into old textual order. The parodies are then peer-reviewed as well as instructor-reviewed. Close observation and survey show that the students have displayed heightened motivation in engaging themselves in the practice and they have benefited greatly from it. Parody proves a particularly fruitful technique in teaching and learning Advanced English, and may also be useful in teaching English writing, since it entitles students to a very unique mode of savoring and wielding the artistic power of the English language.
